privacy policy

Welcome to the official Web site of Girl Scouts of Central Maryland. This Web site is owned and operated by Girl Scouts of Central Maryland, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland.
Girl Scouts of Central Maryland is committed to protecting the privacy of our visitors. This privacy policy discloses how we collect, protect, and use information you provide us online, as well as how we protect children’s privacy. By using the pages on this site, you are accepting the practices described in the Privacy Policy.
If our policy practices change in the future, we will let you know by posting the policy changes on our Web site. However, we will treat all personal information we collect in accordance with the privacy notice in effect at the time the information is collected.
GSCM’s online properties comprise of, but are not limited to, all pages found under www.gscm.org, including our official blog (blog.gscm.org) and online store (http://www.girlscoutshop.com/CENTRAL-MARYLAND-COUNCIL/).

Data Collection

Girl Scouts of Central Maryland uses its best efforts to respect and protect the privacy of its online visitors. At our site, we do not collect personally identifiable information from individuals unless they provide it to us voluntarily and knowingly. This means we do not require you to register or provide information to us in order to view our site. Girl Scouts of Central Maryland only gathers personally identifiable data, such as names, addresses, Zip/postal codes, e-mail addresses, etc., when voluntarily submitted by a visitor. For example, personally identifiable information is collected in order to process online transactions, online donations, or job applications. This information is used solely by Girl Scouts of Central Maryland or other entities that are involved in the operation of this site for internal purposes. We do not sell information you provide to us online to third parties. We will only share personally identifiable information with third parties when (i) the person submitting the information authorizes us to share it; (ii) sharing the information is a necessary operation of the site, for instance, to process a credit card transaction, or (iii) we are required to by law. Girl Scouts of Central Maryland has no control over or responsibility for the data collection and use practices of third parties that process online transactions.

Children’s Privacy

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) protects the personal information of children under the age of 13. This applies to individually identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such as full name, home address, e-mail address, telephone number or any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact the child. The Act and Rule also covers other types of information—for example, hobbies, interests and information collected through cookies or other types of tracking mechanisms—when they are tied to individually identifiable information. It is important for you to understand this law; we encourage you to read more about COPPA.
Note to Parents on Our Privacy Policy
Girl Scouts of Central Maryland is committed to providing a safe, secure, and fun online experience for children who visit our site. We are dedicated to safeguarding any personal information collected online and to helping parents and children have positive experiences on the Internet. Consistent with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without prior verifiable parental consent.
Parents can revoke their consent and ask that information about their children be deleted from the site by contacting our offices by phone at (800) GSUSA 4 U or via e-mail. To do this or to review personal information collected from children, we must verify the identity of the requesting parent. When a parent revokes consent, we will stop collecting, using, or disclosing information from that child. To respect the privacy of parents, information collected and used for the sole purpose of obtaining verifiable parental consent or providing notice is not maintained in retrievable form by the site if parental consent is not obtained after a reasonable time.
Girl Scouts believes it is good policy not to collect more personally identifiable information from children under 13 than is necessary for them to participate in our online activities. In addition, be aware that all sites that are targeted to children under 13 are prohibited by law from collecting more information than they need.
Submissions
Girl Scouts of Central Maryland welcomes children to learn more about our organization and, where appropriate, participate in polls and surveys, as well as submit comments, artwork, writings, and other submissions for posting on our Web site. For this reason, Girl Scouts of Central Maryland follows the guidelines for interactive electronic media published by the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of the Better Business Bureau for pages targeted to children under 13. However, we encourage this be done only with their parent’s knowledge and supervision. We also encourage children to use an alias (e.g., “Bookworm”, “Skater”, etc.), first name, nickname, initials, or other alternative to full names or screen names which correspond with an e-mail address for any activities which will involve public posting.
In keeping with CARU’s Principle regarding respecting and fostering the parents’ role in providing guidance for their children, we encourage parents to check and monitor their children’s use of e-mail and other online activities regularly.

Use of Cookies

Visitors should be aware that non-personal information and data may be automatically collected by the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland Web site through the use of “cookies.” “Cookies” are small text files a Web site can use to recognize repeat visitors, facilitate the visitor’s ongoing access to and use of the site, and allow a site to track usage behavior and compile aggregate data that will allow content improvements. Cookies are not programs that come onto a visitor’s system and damage files. Generally, cookies work by assigning a unique number to the visitor that has no meaning outside the assigning site. If a visitor does not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows the visitor to deny or accept the cookie feature. Girl Scouts of the USA uses “cookie” technology only to obtain non-personal information from its online visitors in order to improve visitors’ online experience and facilitate their visit within our site.
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Website. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (that is, not including your name, address, e-mail address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you on this or other websites. Read more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies.

Links to other Web Sites and Services

This site may be linked to other sites and services that are not maintained by Girl Scouts of Central Maryland. These Web sites have their own privacy policies, which you should review prior to visiting them. We have no responsibility for linked Web sites and provide these links solely for the convenience and information of our visitors.

Our Security Safeguard

The safety and security of your online experience is of the utmost concern to us. We ensure the appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures are in place to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect online.

Credit Card Safety

Protecting the safety of your credit card information is also important to us. We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to protect the security of your credit card information as it is transmitted to us. SSL is the industry standard in Internet encryption technology, which is a highly sophisticated method of scrambling data as it travels from your computer to our Web site servers. We also encrypt your credit card number when we store your order and whenever we transfer that information to participating merchants.
To make sure you are accessing our secure server before you submit personal financial information, look at the lower left-hand corner of your browser. If you see an unbroken key or a closed lock (depending upon your browser), then SSL is active. To double-check for security, look at the URL or Address line of your browser. If you have accessed a secure server, the first characters of the address in that line should change from “http” to “https.”
It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when finished using a shared computer.

Children

If you are under 18, you need parent/guardian permission to use a credit card to make purchases online.